There's a reasonably balanced piece on the Grauniad

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The most obvious questions for me are about the policing: its nature, its tactics (fire teargas to disperse at the first sign of trouble, rather than identify, isolate and remove the bad element) and its inexplicable absence in the stadium (how were those Russian fans able to get into England areas so easily, and how were they able to take explosive devices into the stadium in a country supposedly on terror alert?)

None of this detracts from the idiotic behaviour of a minority of English morons. I don't care if they were provoked, they were being provocative themselves and they didn't need to respond to what the French and Russians did in the way they did. "No surrender" was the National Front's football song back in the day and to people round about my age will always carry that connotation - maybe it's lost that meaning to younger fans but there's no place for it or the other reported chants at or around a football game.

French and Russian fans and the Marseilles police have plenty to answer for, arguably more than "our lot" - but that doesn't absolve those few English idiots from anything.

I've seen no suggestions, though, that the England fan fighting for his life in an induced coma was any part of any bad behaviour. From what I've read he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the French police were slow to help him.

Posted By: Old Man, Jun 12, 22:57:19